“To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better.”
― Warren Ellis
“The road ahead is long and there will be many setbacks. Success is not assured… but the price of failure has never been this high.”
― Charles Lee Lesher, Shadow on the Moon
“”Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?”
“Sounds like a Japanese game show.”
Kat straightens her shoulders. “Okay, we’re going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you’re a science fiction writer.”
Okay: “World government… no cancer… hover-boards.”
“Go further. What’s the good future after that?”
“Spaceships. Party on Mars.”
“Further.”
“Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.”
“Further.”
“I pause a moment, then realize: “I can’t.”
Kat shakes her head. “It’s really hard. And that’s, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.””
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
“Once, I went to this little meeting of Microsoft kids. Like, this high-school trip thing, but it was very exclusive. We met the world’s greatest Futurist there. Dr Gustav Y. Svante. Nobody knows who he is. That’s why he’s the world’s greatest Futurist. He told us… He said that the future was already here, but nobody listens to the future. The future is all around us, but we don’t see the future yet. We don’t hear it or see it, so we can’t tell it.””
― Bruce Sterling, Love is Strange
“I foresee death by culture shock.”
― Woody Allen
“We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition